'Guilt Trip' will make you car sick

LOS ANGELES -- "Yentl" goes yenta in "The Guilt Trip," a creakily old-fashioned comedy that forgot to pack the laughs along with the nudging and kvetching. Possibly the first American film in decades in which characters drive cross-country courtesy of process shots out the back window, this mother-son yakfest blows a gasket and all four tires before it even hits the road. With Seth Rogen in very subdued mode, his fans will smell this one a mile away; it might be a movie only their mothers -- or die-hard Barbra Streisand fans -- could love.

When was the last time an overbearing Jewish mother giving her schlemiel of a son a hard time about not being married was a major component of a big Hollywood film? So to behold Streisand's New York mom Joyce Brewster hectoring her homely visiting son Andrew (Rogen) about his myriad personal shortcomings is to revisit a musty mind-set that the minor updates in Dan Fogelman's woeful script can't begin to freshen up.

The early scenes of Andrew's return from California to his childhood home are so embarrassing that you wonder if such impressive consistency can possibly be sustained. Andrew knows what he's in for, but that still doesn't help when Mom immediately starts in asking what happened to former girlfriends X, Y and Z, complaining that he went to UCLA just to get as far away from her as possible, pointing out that she hasn't had a date since her husband's long-ago death and then recommending that Andrew get therapy. Enough, already.

In an effort to connect with Andrew, Joyce unloads what she considers a bombshell of a secret: She actually had a boyfriend before she met her husband and loved him so much she named her only son after him. Considering it odd she never tried to look him up after his dad died, Andrew does research that reveals he's an executive in San Francisco. With an ulterior motive in mind, he invites Mom to join him on a drive across the country, during which he'll make stops in Virginia, Texas, Santa Fe and Las Vegas to hawk a nontoxic cleansing liquid product he has created to potential retailers.

To save a few bucks, she insists they rent a compact rather than an SUV, forcing them to share very close quarters.

The climactic visit to San Francisco to track down Joyce's former beau predictably plays on, and aims to stimulate, bittersweet emotions. At the same time, the easy-to-get point of the enterprise is to stress that the mother and son's prolonged time together has forced them to break through their various barriers, grudges and expectations to arrive at a more honest satisfying relationship.